Last Updated Sep 17, 2014 5:35 PM EDT
Vice President Joe Biden said in a statement Wednesday that referring to mortgage lenders as “Shylocks” was a “poor choice of words.”
Biden used the term – a reference to a nefarious Jewish character that gives loans in Shakespeare’s play, “The Merchant of Venice” – in a speech to a legal aid group Tuesday. He was describing the experiences of troops who faced foreclosures at home while they were serving in the military.
“People would come to him and talk about what was happening to them at home in terms of foreclosures, in terms of bad loans that were being — I mean, these Shylocks who took advantage of these women and men while overseas,” Biden said.
The remark drew a rebuke from Anti-Defamation League (ADL) National Director Abraham Foxman, who told Yahoo News that the word “remains an offensive characterization to this day” and that the vice president “should have been more careful.”
But Biden reached out to Foxman by telephone, and all seemed to be forgiven. Foxman said in a statement that while the vice president “needs to bone up on his Shakespeare,” he said he ultimately “turned a rhetorical gaffe into a teachable moment.”
“There is no truer friend of the Jewish people than Joe Biden,” Foxman said. “Not only has he been a stalwart against anti-Semitism and bigotry, but he has the courage and forthrightness to admit a mistake and use it as an opportunity to learn and to teach others about the harmful effects of stereotypes.”
In a statement, Biden said, “Abe Foxman has been a friend and advisor of mine for a long time. He’s correct, it was a poor choice of words.
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A remark Joe Biden made at a rally in Danville, Va., on Tuesday has gotten a lot of attention. The vice president told a diverse crowd, including…
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